The Brooklyn Rail

Kin. As in heat.

1. Kin. As in heat.

As in asphalt

 blades. grass rises

through someone


I say to you:

“the gods are in the kiln”
And so are we

the end of

who

cracks the beginning

of  another


Kinder as in the hour

in which

I bore you

with petrol

& wind lit

flames to intuit

familial witness

ash field / canker

glass yielded ceiling

shattering metallic


a climate rears

its disappearance

2.


Kith

clan

kunne


Kön

Königin

As in my family

fell from twenty-

five silken

strings

As in what nature

can ignite?




this inner

climate hangs

daily from

3.

hand held ropes

‐‐Squeamish puppetry‐‐

as in weather

caught within

fog burning

off the tips

of fingers :

our spiral prints

our DNA chamber

music lilacs twist

to tar one

finger pulse-held




Or, waxed knots

nauseous heat

but sliced clean

& bent straight

thru to bone

4.


to hold fast

to spine-split

letters falling lyred

& involuntary

from Oppen’s book


on the landing

I read

a silk cloth




“We are pressed, pressed on each other,
We will be told at once
Of anything that happens”




found coverings

stilled-- dew

wet & familial

as in the smell

5.


Of dirty fur

In morning rain


swept Futura

That must define

Its own rearing


Everywhere I go I

try to recreate

this fragmented

shell

fish char

coal ash

the cauldron

over carbonized

6.


‐‐Cyclonic gestures‐‐


I write a loved


letter to every

last vestige            I write in



mineral bone


mitochondrial    survivor

scrawl


I scratch in

our maternal

haplogroup


Virtu to tie us

lily to lily

neck to neck



This named history

to ensure

we’ll serve

Notes from the Northern Hemisphere: A correspondence

“Begin afresh in the realms of the atmosphere, that encompasses the solid earth, the
terraqueous globe that soars and sings…..”

--Lisa Robertson

In October, I taste ash

He said, why don’t you try replacing the word light. Strip the body and list: focal, temple,
currency, tattoo.

In the bank unrequited, stand in the grass, mirror the sun for hours and sway. Pretend you embrace lung-burnt breath, eye-strung looks.

This needle that sears is a cross-stitch, a word scarred your right calf twitching.
He said, to keep you, I cut out the brightest part of me.

The brightest part. Bioluminescent. When I’m near water, I spread my fingers like starfish. My hands are the part of me I like best.

November comes, and maybe so will the rain

Bright things confide. Tile a confused floor. As if plastic beaded wrists. Sometime in
the afternoon, mud outlines.

Shoes or drawers. Dry eyes spread and panic the day, your nicotine yellow in the grout. Your terrible teeth, my legs declined.

This spot of light on the back porch where ferals come to eat. The crepuscular hour.

The promissory note hour. Evening’s threshold hum.
Hymn on concrete; songs for the curbside.

February hurt

You served him the papers, in the asphalt downpour, the aftershock of rain.
Homonym honeymoon the contract stunned, cat claws bracing my dress to flesh.

We are pressed into flesh that weather made us feel. Like that old school sense of
corresponding. In your own handwriting.

I write: I’d like to replace the word “light” with “radiance” or “glitter” or “hegemonic
narratives.” Why do we respond to water stories? Bright things confide.

March begins equinox promise

Rein-fist twisting the blinds. A house not home, you answer. How rain songs hold
weather: an umbrella turns inside out, then blows open. Wind currency.

The handwritten note thrown back, tiny tabs you folded on desks now arrests air. You
said the throat can change the weather.

In May, I’m grounded as a bull, yet keep looking up

Today I read that two Earths could fit into Jupiter’s giant red spot, which is weather. A
storm. Every six days, it completes a cycle.

Every six days, I find words to harvest and send them to you. Sometimes I find
them by the side of the road. In the backyard. The lemon tree. A cat’s eye.

June, the Gemini

Where every day seems doubled. Two words in one, or what we plant. Downpour,
sunflower, upswing, Persephone. Between someone else’s house, and someone else.

Words count me, counter clocked. Storm-locked. The key I leave under the empty pot
by the door, begging to be robbed.

A squirrel must have been hungry, you said. Rip the largest sunflower head. Light-
ripped and bent, leaf edges drooping to concrete. Between its land and water.

I count the number of ants around his paw. Cat dander. Number of hairs abjecting
the window sill. Thud of small bodies whelping wood. Sheet rip of how to sing claw
singe.

July just keeps burning

Every six days, a voice lesson at the unlisted house. Chest or head songs. Dark or
bright, she said. Open your mouth different to hear the tone. Make an intention, she
said, and even this heaves my head open, flattens my back to back.

This morning I encountered an enormous sunflower.
Helianthus. I sang to it.

I send you this message from 14,000 feet. To go up the mountain, you travel
back through time.

Sarcodes sanguinea. You get your second spring. The scarlet
flower appears in the snowmelt. It steals sugars, a stunning parasite.